Blaze Your Own Trail - How to Maximize Your Savings to Achieve Your Dreams with Curtis Ray

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

About Curtis: Curtis Ray founded MPI® UNLIMITED, LLC and serves as President and CEO. In 2014, Curtis was introduced to the world of Retirement Planning and Insurance through years of research, observing that the traditional investment strategies of the 401(k), IRA, Real Estate, and Insurance were not providing the retirement people hoped for or expected. Curtis invented and developed the MPI® (Maximum Premium Indexing) Secure Compound Interest Account™, bringing simplicity to financial education to Achieve, Protect, Grow, and Accelerate the power of Compound Interest, helping hardworking people, from all walks of life, maximize their savings to achieve their dream retirement. In his first Best-Selling book (2018), Everyone Ends Up Poor, Curtis tackled the challenges of consistent under performance in the current retirement planning industry. In his second Best-Seller (2020), The Lost Science of Compound Interest, Curtis deconstructs the phenomenon of Compound Interest, educating readers to harness this power in their life through small and simple actions. Curtis is a serial entrepreneur and inventor, holding multiple patents in various industries. With a passion to address issues others accept as status-quo, Curtis solves inefficiencies with entirely new approaches. Prior to founding MPI® UNLIMITED, Curtis attended Arizona State University competing on the wrestling team from 2002-2005. While still in college, he started his first business in the granite counter-top industry, growing to over 60 kitchens a week by 2012. Curtis started his 2nd business in 2008, developing and patenting the revolutionary thin natural stone system called ForzaStone®. Curtis and his wife Erin live in Gilbert, Arizona with their five beautiful children: Cayden, Caliann, Brody, Lexi, and Kenzie. He enjoys spending time with his family and competing in all types of sports. When Curtis is not working, he enjoys traveling and experiencing all the world has to offer. Connect with Curtis: https://mympien.com/ Connect with Jordan: https://jordanjmendoza.com/m/social Thanks for listening to the show! Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I had a total of 11 jobs between the age of 11 and 17, just trying to help and support my mom. When I gave away my ATS resume template, I used to charge $3,000 for. If I were someone that wanted to work with you, I think the thing that would resonate with me the most is a fact that you have been as far as they will fall. I gave her all my videos, and today she's a message saying I got my first client, and I could not be happier for her. On my show, one thing I love to do is really get context into people's journey. I saw vegetables door to door. I saw newspapers. I do it because I truly care to help.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I've got a very special guest today. His name is Curtis Ray, and I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. Awesome, yeah. My name is Curtis Ray from Gilbert, Arizona.

I love entrepreneurialism. I love building businesses, helping people achieve what we look for, the most elusive financial freedom. Two-time bestselling author, I'm married with five children. So I always joke that I'm really good at two things in life, making money and making children. So unfortunately, children eat up all my money. But now we do it for the love of the journey. And we really enjoy bringing valued people, educating people that the path to wealth is quite simple. You just got to know the rules of the game.

And unfortunately, most people are playing blindfolded or one arm tied behind their back. And my job is to make sure it's as clear and easy as possible and just provide as much value to the world. Awesome. Awesome. Appreciate you sharing that. And we have something in common right off the bat. I'm also a father of five.

We've got three boys, two girls. And so what are your age ranges? 17, 15, 13, 11, and 9. Awesome. So ours are 2, 5, 11, 13, and 17. You still got a baby at home. Oh, I couldn't even imagine that. We do.

My youngest is almost nine now. So it's like super easy to. Okay, I've made it. I've made it in life now. Right. We aren't quite there yet, but we're moving that direction. So my favorite part of the show, Curtis, is actually really getting deep context into the audience backstory and really finding out where you're from, you know, where you grew up, what kind of kids you were. So I'd love to find out, you know, where did you actually grow up and let's talk, you know, adolescence, you know, elementary, middle, and high school years.

And then what kind of things did you actually get into? Yeah, definitely. I have eight brothers and sisters, so I grew up in a very large family. My dad's a contractor. We didn't grow up very wealthy at all. I got a story where my dad would, he had a really unfortunate situation with banking. It's called Savings and Loans back in the 80s. And he lost a ton of money. All his life savings. His big projects were all gone in the savings and loans debacle of the late 80s. So he would have to start delivering pizza at night. He would deliver pizzas for pizza. I'd work all day and then go work all night delivering pizzas. And, And at the end of every night, they would throw away all the bad pizzas that were made. You know, they were made incorrectly. And he would dumpster dive, go take the pizzas, bring them home every single morning. We thought we were the richest kids in the whole world. We literally ate pizza every single day for two or three straight years.

And to this day, I can still eat pizza every single day. I never got sick of it. By far my favorite food. I grew up playing every sport known to man. And I also played baseball, football, basketball, wrestling, cross-country, all of the above. I found my love in running and wrestling. I do love football the most,

but I was really small kids, so football just wasn't meant to be. But running and wrestling was where I took my talents, three sport athletes, All-American, all different things. I end up serving an LDS mission for the Mormon, Mormon church in Santiago, Chile. So I was there for two years,

learned Spanish, been able to dedicate my life to helping more people down there. Really loved my experience down there. Got home from my mission, and I wrestled at Arizona State University. It's super passionate about winning. I like winning and things like that. While I was in ASU or when I was wrestling at ASU

spending eight hours day, anyone who's been a collegiate athlete, it's a job. It is a full-time job, morning, afternoon, night, weekends. You become, you know, basically is all in on that. But someone, we were playing ping pong in my friend's basement one morning. And we were over there hanging out. And his brother came downstairs and said, hey, guys, we need to start a granite countertop business. There are so much money in granite countertops.

And this was 2003. So it was before the remodeling boom of 2004, five, and six. And I'd never met some with granite countertops. But I just got a $9,000 scholarship check. And I was like, dude, I got $9,000. I will totally invest in a granite countertop business. What's granite countertops? And then everyone laughed and said, oh, it's this really cool, expensive, super luxury.

countertop you put into home and you make tons of freaking money on installing for rich people. I was like, that is a really great idea. But it kind of sucks because there aren't very many people can afford it. So I went down this really awesome discovery or creation. I'm an inventor. I love to the creation process, the product development process. And if you are familiar with what's called a prefabricated countertop, it's those granite countertops you can buy at Home Depot, lows that come pre-cut with the edge already on them and you can pull them out of the box. And you can pull them out of the box and install them. I actually invented that concept.

So back in 2003, I said, okay, it's really cool that rich people can afford granite countertops, but why can't everyone afford grand countertops or at least the majority of people? And so we went down this idea of pre-cutting it, making it very efficient, making very beneficial the price point where most people would afford it. So if you've bought a home, a tract home from one of the major builders that has granite countertops in it, that kind of comes from me. Like I have known who came up with that idea to bring it in, cut the cost by about half and still be able to make a healthy margin and bring the mass as

something that was custom and typically only for the exclusive rich. And so that's kind of my life. I never had a job before. I was a three sport athlete, 4.2 GPA in high school and college, 4.0 GPA. You know, I like just doing my best all the time. And on that day, in 2004, I said, I'm going to start a granite countertop business. And from that point on, because I was able to have the advantage of prefabricate countertops over everyone else. I was 23 years old, never had a job of my life and was making a half million dollars in my first year coming from a really poor family. So it's just this really amazing opportunity of innovation, creation, finding a problem in

the industry and fixing it and then making it available to the masses and it served out very well. What's happened from that point on is even cooler, but that's kind of the early half of my life. Yeah, no, awesome. There's definitely a lot to talk about and to break down. there for sure appreciate the context so uh you mentioned uh Arizona State actually I had another guest on the show I think it was actually the first season his name is Clifford Starks he wrestled at uh at Arizona State and then he actually wrestled or fought in in the UFC as well we both graduated 99 uh we both went to ASU so I wrestled that time frame from

2002 to 2006 with clippard starts Kane Velasquez John Maraga yeah C.B. Dahlway ride and bade Ryan bader all of them I actually did two two cage fights also, you know, so I've kind of on the whole clan of it. There you go. Well, yeah, that's awesome, man. So, yeah, you know, Clifford's such a great guy. He told an awesome story about Kane on his episode. I'll let all our listeners go back in time and listen to that one

because it was a great conversation. So you talk about being diligent, you know, wanting to win. And when Clifford talked about wrestling at ASU, it was a lot of that. It was a lot of like, you know, you better figure this crap out. You're going to go out and get punched in the face, but you better get back up and you better figure this out. So can you talk about the coaches that had the biggest impact on you

and some of the things that maybe they helped instill in you during that time that you still carry with you today? Yeah, I mean, one of the most important things to me in life is that people can trust that I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do. I was always the responsible wrestler. You know, I don't drink. I don't party, you know, things like that. And so it's funny because at ASU, you were not allowed student athletes were not allowed to drive the vans and do different, have keys to certain things and various things that student athletes were not allowed to have.

But I had those privileges. So the coach would be like, hey, go pick up the van, bring it around. Hey, go do this, go do that. And I just always get it done. And so the idea that, you know, a coach that's in his 30s and 40s that, you know, rep represents a multi-billion dollar university and stuff like that, have the confidence. mean knowing Curtis will not mess up. I can trust them. He's going to do what he says he's going to do and he's going to come through for me. And every time he found himself in a in a situation, you know, I'd get a text

message or a phone call or this or that. One time he even found, you know, one of our coaches found themselves in a rough situation at 2.30 at night. And who was one of their phone calls? Me. And I went and picked him up and took, you know, got taken care of him. So those things, just those bonds and creating that, hey, when you're an adult, you got to start acting like adult. And when you say you're going to do something, do it. your trust and your confidence and your ethics and your morals and people knowing that they can count on you is going to lead you further than probably any other decision you make is making sure your word is honorable and you're you know you make sure you always get done what you say

you're going to get that awesome man and so you mentioned cage fighting you know stepping stepping into the ring with another human and your goal is to is to punch them in the face right is to knock them out so can you talk about how cage fighting relates to being an entrepreneur. My first cage fight, I was supposed to fight some guy. I weighed 140 pounds. I was going to fight 140. And the day of weigh-ins, I'd show up and the person didn't show up.

And so I don't have a fight. And I had invited like 30 people. My family was there. My friends were there. My coach was there. Everyone was there. And I'm like, dude, I have to fight. And they're like, we're going to put you up against the owner and head trainer.

of the fighting facility. But he weighs 160. And I'm like, oh crap. Like, weight is a big deal, especially for a wrestler. Like, every five or 10 pounds is a big deal. So I call up my coach and I say,

hey, coach Ortiz, what do I do? I weigh 140. The guy weighs 160. And he goes, you've got to back out. You can't do this. You're going to get hurt. And I'm like, I can't. My family's here.

My friends are here. I've got to do this. And he's like, going very conservative, man, don't put yourself at risk. Do not put yourself at risk. Make sure that you're protecting yourself at all times. And I'm like, okay. So I am doing the fight.

I beat the freaking crap out of the guy. So no big deal, no harm, no foul. There was one of those things that you cannot fear. There cannot be fear, but you also have to protect yourself. We've got this erratic nonsense in the business world saying no risk, no reward. That is the worst saying that anyone's ever come up with, ever. It should be eliminate risk, maximize reward, meaning find ways not to expose yourself. you should never put yourself at exposure.

Exposure is required sometimes, but mitigate as much exposure as possible and then maximize all the resources and benefits and different people available to to help you, you know, avoid the risks and maybe the problems and mistakes they've made in their life. There are so much resource and knowledge out there that you don't have to put yourself very much risk

to win the game of money or win the game of business. But we have this stupid mentality that we have to put ourselves at risk. We got to go. We got no, no, no, no. Methodical. Slow and steady wins this race. 99% of the American population end up losing or downsizing in retirement, not achieving the financial freedom they expected and deserved because they put themselves at risk.

I went into the match. I went in the fight and I went in very conservatively. I am never going to expose myself and just do what I do best. And that is win. And I was able to win. I was able to do what I had to do. Love the analogy as well to business. You know, you've got to think about it.

You know, think about it first, be tactical about it. And then once you know that you have the right approach, then you can kind of see what your opponent's going to do, right? You can see what the environment's going to throw at you. So awesome, man. The other thing that you mentioned is you've never had a job in the day in your life, right? You come up with this amazing idea. And I love people that create things.

I have a business partner in a fishing company that I'm a part of. And he created this thing called live lures. And they're essentially fishing lores that mimic. the way that worms actually move and it's man like five xing the amount of bashed people are catching around the country. And so I love when people come up with a concept or idea and then put it out there because there's plenty of times when you have this cool thing, but you actually don't take action on it. And we hear lots of stories about that. So I'd love to find out, you know, it sounds like you came up with the thing and you took action pretty quickly. So can you

share with the audience like what did that process look like, the thought process of seeing this hole in the marketplace and knowing that there's so many people that are underserved in this market that actually can afford this thing if it were out there. So what did that process look like for you? Absolutely. You have to become obsessed with being the best, knowing the most, understanding how the game is played and then not stopping. It took me about seven months of nonstop research, six to eight hours a day, every single day on how kitchens worked, how granite worked, how polishing worked, how you import it. Were the factories that cut the granite.

I mean, just this whole thing of nonstop obsession, even to the degree that I started missing practice sometimes. I call my coach. I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm so tired. I was up until 3 o'clock last night. And he's like, dude, you're going to get injured. You can't do that.

You've got to sleep well and all that other stuff. And so I didn't even neglect part of my life. As you probably know, most entrepreneurs neglect parts of their life. Things become more important than other parts of their life. And that was the last year I wrestled at ASU. I became obsessed with remodeling and making money and building a business and having employees and stuff, but you have to become absolutely obsessed with what you want. And that is the creation process or the winning process or building a business or being the best in your industry. And most importantly, you have to love it.

You have to love what you do because if you don't, you will burn out that fast. You will burn out very quickly and then it'll just become a drain to you and it'll actually be worse for your life. But because I loved it, it was exciting to me. I wanted to learn about it and I wanted to create this thing that was going to change the home remodeling space. I never burned out and it was just 10 years of awesomeness, literally making millions of dollars during this 10 years. And then the day happened. I don't even know about my day that happened. But in those 10 years, never burned out.

Absolutely loved it. And most importantly, I got to see the satisfaction in clients. people who thought they would never be able to afford granite caratops, never be able to have that luxury that, oh, I'm now at the status of what previously was only available to the rich. Now I can have a my house and fill that luxury in my house and really make me feel like, hey, I've made it in life, things like that. That's awesome. So where is that now?

Do you still have that business? Has it sold? I think you mentioned something about a sale? Yeah. So every entrepreneur goes through this. It's called Armageddon. Armageddon. I had this really super rich human being come to me and said, hey, Curtis, why is your business trapped at around $5 million of revenue per year? Yeah, it's really cool to

make a million dollars a year in profit, but it's way cooler to make $10, $20, $30 million a year in profit. So what stops you from not being a multi, multi, multimillioner and just being kind of where you're at? And I go, because I have a problem that I like to do things by myself. I am the CEO. I'm the CEO. I'm the operations manager. I'm the quality control. I want to meet every single client and all that other stuff. And so I'm kind of trapped at this 50 to 60 kitchens a week business that was the third largest in Arizona. So don't get me wrong.

It was this giant business. It didn't take root like it could have of been in this nationwide monster gargantuan. So this investor came to me who was only about money. And sometimes you need that person around you, but you can't let that person have control because sometimes they make crazy decisions. But he came to me and said, let's expand this into multiple states. Let's expand this nationwide. Let's get this into Home Depot, Lowe's, things like that.

And let's grow this to a $50 million business or $100 million business. And being an entrepreneur, what do we say? I love making money. Let's go. Let's make this happen. Not really taking into account of the risk and the no risk, no reward mentality. And let's grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and never worrying about the actual protection of the business. I signed a 50-50 partnership with this individual.

And you think a 50-50 partnership is what protects you. No, no, no. It protects the person. who doesn't have emotion. It puts that liability, the person who actually cares about the business or is emotionally attached to the business because a lot of things can happen in a 50-50 partnership where one person can stalemate the other person or hold, you know, basically ransom or, you know, take them captive, basically, because they don't have any emotion inside the game.

And so we end up being partners. We end up growing the business very fast, very, making a lot more money than what we did until one day says, you know what, I'm taking all the money. Good luck. Wait, what? Yeah, I know you have no money. I've got $50 million. So good luck.

I'll see you in court. Took all, you know, a lot of bad decisions were made. And ultimately, I fought him for the next six months. I had about $200,000 saved up. Even though I was making millions of dollars a year, I didn't understand one very important concept. Protect my future. Save money. Get it somewhere protected and secure so that when rainy day happens, Armageddon happens.

I'm still okay. But I reinvested every dollar back in the business. entrepreneurs, what do we do, we reinvest, reinvest, reinvest. And then our business goes out of business 95% of the time. 95% of all small business go out of business. And we never save a freaking penny. We never build a retirement plan. We never get money compounding for us. We just reinvest. And when that happened, I had about $200,000 in my account. I fought him with lawyer after lawyer after lawyer. And then ultimately, I had to give up. That day was over $0 in my bank account. and I had to wave the white flag and give them my businesses.

On November 1st of 2014, I had literally $11,000 in my bank count. I had to sign over my businesses. I was married with five children and non-compete. And I said, what just happened? And I was depressed. I was depressed for around six minutes. Those six minutes or there's more six minutes of my life. Being an entrepreneur or purebred, it was never about the money.

So it was more that I lost. Like, frick, I just lost. I lost the game that I was the man. And I own this. I own the granite countertop space. That was my space and I just lost because I didn't understand contracts. I didn't understand liability. I didn't understand how to protect myself.

And on that morning, I woke up on November 1st of 2014 and I said, I will never be vulnerable to money again for the rest of my life. How does the game of money work? Yeah, business is awesome, but money controls the world. How does money work? And I went on this obsessive path for the next year on how to never lose my money again, where to put money, how to protect money, how to compound money, where's the best place to build my best future? What is financial freedom? Because net worth is cool. I had millions of dollars in net worth and I

had no financial freedom because net worth is what the world tries to tell you is valuable, is what success is, how much net worth do you have. But the ones who actually win, the ones who are actually financial free are the ones who have the money that they get to spend and do whatever they want, whenever they want with however they want with whomever they want. That is what we actually want. But we get tricked and we get confused and we get distracted by net worth and how much value to have and real estate equity and all that other stuff that is basically useless if you don't have money to spend financial freedom, the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want. And so on that day, I said, I'm going to take my talents to the financial industry because there's a huge hole in the financial world. And that is 99% of Americans end up downsizing in retirement, end up with lesser in their life when they're going to be. They worked 40 to 50 years of their life to achieve what we call the golden years.

And basically no one achieves it. One percent of the American population actually achieved the golden years. Everyone else downsizes, smaller house, smaller car. Your financial advisor is already telling you you're going to be in a lower tax bracket. Don't worry about it. Your kids won't be home. You'll have just enough to die poor. So I end up writing a book called Everyone Ends Up Poor.

Literally, I researched for four years on the pitfalls of financial planning. The pitfalls are retirement planning. The pitfalls are why if you trust the 401k IRA, your financial advisor, your CFP, there's a 99% probability you're going to end up poor. And how do you fix it? Because there is a very specific way of how you fix that. I end up developing and creating the number one best retirement plan in the world by far.

It dominates basically everything. I wrote a book about it. Like I said, everyone ends up poor. and now for the first time I get to go, you know, for the last four years, I've been going across the country doing podcasts, keynote speeches, all types of things about what I learned about money, how you implement this protect money first, then grow money, not no risk, no reward, but eliminate risk, maximize reward. And if you understand the game of money, you can increase your retirement income by up to 200% over the 401k Roth IRA index funds, mutual funds, real estate, rentals, all the various things that really focus on net worth and not financial freedom. Love it. So let's break down what this means. You know, there's going to be a lot of people that tune in. They heard all that and they're like, that sounds amazing, but I don't even know what the heck he was Curtis is talking about here. So let's use me, right, as a test dummy. Let's just build

this out for someone. I'm 41 years old, right? Father of five, let's say I have $2,000 a month that I can invest in an MPI. What does that get me in the next decade or the next 20 years? Over a 401k account. Yeah. I'm going to go back to the kind of granite countertop, my creation with granite countertops, is we took something that was so exclusive and we redesigned it and brought it to the public so everyone could take advantage of it.

In 1997, here's a little tip. If you want to do things right with your money, find the absolute most richest people in the whole world and what do they do with their money? That is what you should do with their money because they don't have 401ks. They don't have IRAs. A lot of them don't even mess around with real estate rentals. They use more exclusive real estate programs that produce better results. In 1997, there was this retirement plan that was launched to the world.

It's called Premium Finance. It is literally the most exclusive plan in the whole world. You had to have a $5 million net worth to even qualify to even learn about it. Think how crazy that is. $5 million of money sitting around to even live. learn about it and get inside the club. And so this is the most exclusive plan in the whole world. It is a life insurance contract.

I know that sounds weird right there. A life insurance contract that has guaranteed security against stock market risk. So now the whole protect myself is taking care of. This life insurance contract has an arm, a compound interest arm, inside the S&P 500. Everyone in the world knows the S&P 500 index fund is the best of the best. So now you have guaranteed security against the risk of the risk. of the S&P 500 with the growth potential of the S&P 500. That's what rich people do with their money.

They don't lose money and then they go make lots of money. And then lastly, premium finance. It's where the insurance company or the banks add money to your account, leverage, using someone else's money alongside your money combined to grow the most money possible. Because you're rich, you have access to other people's money. And then now you can use your money plus their money to double dip and now you're producing up to double or even triple the results of the 401k traditional index fund, mutual fund, things like that.

So when I saw that, when I discovered that in my four years of research on how financial planning work and who uses what and where do rich people use their money, what do normal people use their money, what do other people use their money? I discovered this premium finance package. And I said, that is the coolest thing I've ever heard in my freaking life. You're telling me this whole time there's a place that you can guarantee your money not to lose inside a risk, stock market risk. You can have the growth potential to stock market,

and you can use someone else's money to enhance that. And I don't have access to it because I didn't have $5 million just sitting around at that time. That's not cool. That is not fair. Everyone in the world deserves this opportunity of achieving leveraged compound interest. So what did I do? I'm going to build it. I'm going to build it from scratch.

I'm going to take premium finance concept and I'm going to rework it, redesign it so now that I can take this customization retirement plan that only is exclusively available for the super rich and provide it to the public. Everyone told me that was impossible. Financial advisors, CFPs, insurance industries, the regulation companies, the compliance industry, everyone said that is not possible because you cannot offer leverage to the public without a high net worth to begin with. You need collateralization to even get leverage. And I said, Nope, there is one way to do it. Leverage in real time.

Leverage in real time. If a person's willing to save money, you'll leverage against the money they saved. And the more money they saved, the more leverage they get. You built it backwards. You stuffed a bunch of leverage on the front side, and then you killed the leverage on the back side. I'm going to do it the correct way, the way that can now be produced for every single American. And that is leverage in real time step by step by step. So if you're willing to save money, we can premium finance it.

And if we can premium finance it, we can increase your returns, your retirement income, your death benefit, all the different features and benefits inside of this premium finance package by up to 200% over anything that I've been introduced to, including your index funds, mutual funds, things like that. And so when you do a side by side and you premium finance, we call MPI, maximum indexing MPI premium finance, we are allowing leverage to now for the first time in the history of personal finance, every single person who's willing to save money can now participate in leverage. And when you start using leverage inside of financial planning, you can increase your retirement income by up to 200%.

You're 41 years old. You want to save $2,000 per month. Let me use a number that I use often in my brain, so I'm just going to use that number. In 15 years, if you can save $2,500 per month, $2,500 a month, $30,000 a year. In 15 years, that is how long it takes roughly to become. a millionaire status. You are a millionaire in 15 years saving $2,500 a month. But that's your net worth. Net worth is not the reward. Your financial freedom is the reward because $2,500 a month inside of an index fund will also produce you around $1 million. Both of them end up producing a million dollars. But financial freedom is the key here. One million dollars inside of a premium finance package ends up producing about $100,000 of tax-free income.

every single year for the rest of your life. $1 million inside of an index fund, 401k IRA produces around $40,000. Exact same amount of net worth, but one was designed for the pure idea of financial freedom. How do you get the most spendable income off of it? And one, $100,000 a year, the other $40,000 a year. So that's what, that is so exciting to me that I've been able to design this thing that took the most exclusive, custom retirement plan, in the whole world, premium finance, and redesigned it, just like we did in granite countertops

and say, now you, are you willing to save $300 a month, $500 a month, $1,000 a month, $2,500 a month, whatever amount you're allowed to save, we're going to now attach premium finance to it, leverage in real time, and end up producing two to three times better retirement income potential than a 401k Roth IRA index funds or real estate rental. I love it. I love it. I mean, that leverage is like everything, right? So you're basically giving leverage to everyone that didn't get leverage before. Exactly. I mean, that's a, that's massive, you know, because they get, you know, you get a bigger piece of a lot of

different pies, you know. So, yeah, I love the concept. And I love how you've thought about it, right? You thought about if I can do this with this product or this service, why can't I do the same thing here, right? And, you know, one of the things, one of my mentors who passed away recently, his name's Bill Gray, he always said is, listen, you have to dream so big that it scares you. And I'm sure tackling the finance industry, like that had to have been a little scary, but you're like,

let's, let's do this. Like you probably, you seem like the kind of guy that's like, anytime someone says you can't, you're like, challenge accepted, baby, let's go. We're going to this thing full force. The thing is, is like, I believe when you say like I dream big or believe big, I didn't only attack the financial industry or tried to improve the financial industry. I also went to the insurance industry. And the crazy thing is this, all I got from the moment I launched in 2018, and I have tens of thousands of clients coming in, learn about how you leverage life insurance and even outproduce the stock market potential and things like that.

All I've received is hate nonstop. Stay in your lane. You're not a CFP. You shouldn't be here. You can't do that. You can't leverage a life insurance. contract unless you have $5 million in net worth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just like,

the craziest thing is people fear change more than they fear losing. So they continue to lose. And they just keep losing over and over and over because they fear innovation. They fear change. Blockbuster feared it. Netflix came to Blockbuster and say, buy us. And it was like 200 grand or something ridiculous like that. And Blockbuster CEO said, no, no, no, I'm not going to buy you. I give people the experience of coming in and buying

their popcorn and looking at their video. and this and that, and they couldn't see the vision. They couldn't see there was a better way. And then Kodak, Kodak's an interesting one. They had a 99% market share, basically, on their phones. And Apple or the smartphone said, hey, can you make us a one megapixel camera to put into our phones? And they just came out with those really cool. I forget what they're called, those gray, silver, and red, or silver, blue, and red, 20 megapixel cameras.

The first ones ever, they can hold the 10,000 pictures on it. And Kodak was like, we're dominating the space. And they said, no, no, no, no. The market's changing. People want convenience. People want better. They want to, you know, improve situations. We want a one megapixel camera to put into our phone.

And they said, no. They said, no, we're not going to degrade our value, a 20 megapixel, blah, blah, blah. And within 18 months, they're out of business. Absolutely out of business. And so never stop. Innovation is always there. Evolution is always happening. Those who don't fear change are the ones who change the world.

And yeah, I take a lot of heat all. time my TikTok channel 1.5 million followers verified all I do is take heat all day stay in your lane Curtis my lane is financial freedom my lane is innovation always getting better every single day and I never say no to anything good people come to me all the time well Curtis you forgot about that you are right I did not see that oh embraced it it's now part of the MPI system nonstop evolution it will never be as good it's going to be every single day if you find people who love innovation and creation and change to make things better, those are the ones who are going to bring true value to your life.

100%. So let's talk TikTok. You're a verified creator on there. I'm a verified creator on the platform. My audience is nowhere near the size of yours. You're consistently growing. Your opinion on one thing. Do you think that being hated is actually exponentially increased growth

because haters are engagement too, right? They can provide engagement. and they'll share something. And then the personal, they share it with is actually like, actually, this guy is pretty cool. I like this content. And so it helps grow. So I love your opinions on that. And then also tell everyone the value of going live and how much that can add to, you know,

inbound leads, conversations, potential investors, brand partnerships. I'd love for you to go into that as well. The haters required. All my videos that go the most viral are the most controversial because haters love to be hurt. They're, we call them keyboard warriors, right? The warriors who are just, I'm going to take him down. I'm going to expose him, all that of those stuff. And so a lot of hate has done me well.

There's some hate that goes too far. Sometimes I'm like, you're blocked. You're now being disrespectful. There's a difference between straight on disrespect and attacking someone's family or attacking my kids or whatever else and just traditional hate. Oh, no, you're going to have to pay the bank interest. So hate is good. Embrace it.

If you want to be a true menace to society, you want to be a true. true cavalier, man, you've got to embrace that thing and just know that if you're not hated, you're not doing, you're not changing the world. I mean, recently, I'm going to try to be as incognito as I possibly can without, or with that, with still giving the full details. But there's this certain guy who loves to talk about getting out of debt, the debt-free guy, right? This old dude kind of bald, you know, it's got 19 million followers on his podcast. They did a podcast about me saying, number one scam artist in the world because I say,

focus about winning before getting out of debt. That's a loser mentality. Oh, I feel shameful because I'm in debt. I'm in debt. No, no, no. Start winning. Start focusing about money making money, money making you wealth and financial freedom. And so I guess that message turns me into a scam artist because I tell people,

getting money making money is the most important decision of your whole life. And so don't fear of the hate go all in on it. Why do I go live every single day? They absorb content differently. So I do everything. I wrote two bestselling books. I go live. I post videos.

I do funnels. I do everything because people embrace ideas differently. You've got to speak to them in their own language. I don't say no to anything good. If it is good and it can connect with someone, I embrace it and we do all of it. This really cool story. My TikTok story is kind of interesting. I'm an abundant thinker.

I believe in the law of attraction. I believe that whatever you want you're going to get. You are the only reason why you're poor is because you're, you don't believe you deserve to be rich. You actually have convinced yourself that I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not handsome enough. I'm not pretty enough.

Whatever the scenario is. So you get exactly what you believe you deserve. And unfortunately, your brain only is capable of doing so much. I was making $3,000 to $500,000 a year every single year. I was the richest person I knew. I was the richest of my friends. And in 2018,

my friend did a subdivision and sold 60 houses. And he made over a million dollars in one year. And I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, no. I am the richest of my friends. And in that moment, my ceiling went up. And guess how long it took before I made a million dollars? Seven months. For 12 years of my life, I never broke $500,000 in a year. And it took just my friend pushing me to a limit. I did not know I deserved. And all of a sudden, I'm there. And so I'm on TikTok. I'm doing a bunch of videos. I put in the time, two, three videos a day, every single day, going live, doing all that other thing. And I got where I had 200,000 followers on TikTok, and I got verified. And it was pretty freaking awesome. I was like, I'm verified. I'm cool now.

People can trust me, whatever, whatever. And I'm going to keep pushing the pace. I went on a podcast with a guy named Hakeem Vez. And he's an NFL football player, a really cool dude. And he was doing a podcast that don't sleep on TikTok. And he wanted to invite me and wanted to know how I had 200,000 followers on a very boring subject as retirement planning. Very, it's just a retired. Oh, yeah, you do.

this for 20 years. You're going to end up financially free. I'm not the guy who says, go buy cryptocurrency. You can be a billionaire tomorrow or, you know, all the other hype, hype, hype guys. No, I'm the slow and steady guy. Be methodical. Don't put yourself at risk. Let money make money for you. And in 15 to 20 years, you're going to look back and say, best freaking decision in my life. And he goes, that's fascinating how you've got so many people to listen to you. And he goes, how did you really do? And I go, how I really did it? Because I believe I have a story. I believe I have a message and I have a value to bring the world that is bigger than any human being on the planet right now.

And that is the value of financial freedom. Because financial freedom is the best of all outside of your health. Health supersedes money. But outside of your actual personal health, money is the most important thing you'll ever learn in your whole life because it provides opportunities. It provides ways to have better health. It provides ways to have better relationships, better happiness, better freedom, all the things.

Get your money in line. Your life's going to change probably more radically than anything else you've ever done in your life. So I believe my story and my mission is bigger than, anyone in the world right now. And he goes, that's a pretty big saying right there. That's pretty confident. I'm like, yeah.

And he goes, so you just believe you deserve it. I go, yeah, I believe I deserve it. And it just came to me. I got verified all these people because I believe I deserve it and I have a message for the world. And he goes, it has to be more than that. I'm like, watch this. I'm going to do it again.

I believe I deserve a million followers. And he goes, okay, how long is that going to take you? I'm like, I will have it done by my birthday, which is six months from today. In six months from today, I will have one million followers on TikTok. And he's like, that's not going to happen. You had 200,000 followers in like a year. And now you're going to get another 800,000 followers in six months.

I go, yeah. And he's like, how are you going to do it? I'm like, it's already done. I believe it. And I truly believe it. I'm not just saying it. I truly freaking believe it. And there's a difference between belief and want.

Like when you truly believe you want something and you actually believe you deserve it, then the universe just bestows it upon you. And so I said, watch this. It's going to happen. He's like, okay, we'll see you in six months. Guess how long it took until I had one million followers on my TikTok channel? Three months. One week.

One week. That afternoon, I got off the podcast. I did one TikTok video. It got 26 million followers or 26 million views. And I had one million followers by the end of the week, by Christmas Day. It was the single most aha moment in my life. That one week where I saw my TikTok just, I mean, the count was like this. I had this ongoing count where I wouldn't even go.

home. I was just watching it. It was the most fascinating thing ever, where it's just thousands of people coming in every single moment. Hakeem ends up messaging me and say, how the freaking heck did you do that? You sold your soul to the devil. And I said, no. It's because I truly believe I deserve it. And that is the difference between

the people who are actually the Uber successful is they'd somehow convince their brain. I want it. I deserve it. Give it to me. It's not I think. I'm going to you. I deserve it. I need it right now. and then it just comes to you.

And I go in and out of it. Some, I, like, I consider myself one of the most abundant thinkers in the world. And some days I believe I deserve it. Other days I do not believe I deserve it. And it is literally that fine and that fickle that something in my life happens. Like, oh, I don't really deserve that, do I? No, no, no, no, no. Curse, you do.

You put in the work. You put in the time. You bring value to people. You have a message for the world. You deserve it. And then all of a sudden, I'm up again. And then something happens and I'm down. So you've got to find a way to get in the channel of success,

the channel of abundance and get in that and find every opportunity of staying in it. And then when you get out of it, find a way to get back into it because you're going to be in and out your whole life. But from that day on, I said anything I want in life, I'm going to get. Love it. Yeah, you have to have the confidence. You have to have the belief because when you're not confident, other people are also not confident, right?

It's contagious when you've got that energy and you're putting out that message to people. And you mentioned it a bunch of times, but it truly is about adding value. Like how am I adding value? And one of the ways I see you on TikTok is you've got this massive board behind you. It's almost like a TV screen, but it's kind of not like a TV screen, and you're able to write on it. So what company makes that? I see certain people have those, and I'm like, that's a pretty great resource to have because you can communicate visually. You mentioned the ways that we all learn, right?

Different. Some are visual. Some are kinesthetic learner. some are auditory, right? So having that option, I think, is great. So what company makes that board? What does it cost? And how much value has that added to you to be able to say, hey, text, whatever, to this number.

And are you actually seeing people take action when you're putting out call to actions like that? Yeah, it's called the vibe board, V-I-B-E. I think it's like $2,500 bucks somewhere around there. It's game-changing because people are visual learner. So if I can write something in real time, I can use the key. calculator, show them in real time what their potential is against the 401k IRA, things like that. I can open up the internet. I can browse.

I can show them what premium finance is. I can go to Vanguard's calculator and do a side by side with mine and all types of things. And so it's been game changing for me. I highly recommend it. I go live every single day, sometimes twice a day. And how many clients do I get off it? I get about 500 clients a month off of it. My lives are a very great generator.

Those are amazing conversions for sure. They are huge because people, I'm live. I'm not hiding behind some keyboard. People love to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's no recourse if they're wrong and they can lie to you and things like that. But when you're live, you are exposed. You are raw. You are real.

You can't hide behind anything. People ask me questions in real time. I don't know what their questions are going to be. And I have to be so professional. I have to be such an expert. I got to know my junk. You cannot be a poser and change the world. You can't be fake.

And so when I go live, it was hard for the first couple ones because, man, it's a little nervous, right? What are they going to ask me? Am I going to know the answer? And sometimes you've got to not BS your way through crap. Like sometimes people go, blah, blah, blah, what about I bonds? The other day someone goes, what about I bonds? And yeah, I could have made something up, oh, they're not very good because of that. And I had to say, I don't know what that is.

Never heard of that before, you know? And so when you're alive, like, be authentic, be who you are. don't be scared to say, I don't know because people respect that. I don't know everything. I am always learning and I'm going to go do research on this and that and that. So I can come back the next day and be able to provide more value to people, more great content, more truth about money so that ultimately more people can achieve financial freedom. Love it, love it.

And so staying on the topic of TikTok, you know, there's TikTok, their analytics. I mean, it's pretty rich. You could look into a lot of data organically as well as, obviously, Obviously, if you guys do any paid ads, I don't know if you guys have dabbled into paid ads on TikTok or not, but how focused is your social media team in looking at watch time and the different analytics where your content is performing better than others, is it have increased shares and saves. Do you have someone on your team that's focused on that? And so that you're creating similar content to try to replicate those ones that have gone viral? So I've been on TikTok for two and a half years now and I've come to the conclusion. I have no freaking clue how any of them go viral.

I make some amazing videos that it gets like 5,000 views. I make some just like, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. It gets a million views. And so I've come to the conclusion. My job is just to put out what I know is truth. My job is to put as much truth as possible. And some catch, some don't.

I don't look at analytics. It's not worth my time. I'd rather take that time and create more content where people go live more. And the ones I get to, the ones I get to, I can make the exact same video. I can post the exact same video with the different things and, you know, just different times the day.

One blows up, one doesn't. So I've come to the conclusion. It's not about the analytics. It's not even about the money I make. It's not about me telling my story, me telling the truth. And if I put out enough content, everyone in the world is going to see it. Regardless of which ones go viral, which one I don't, if I make enough content, enough are going to go viral, enough people are going to see it.

Just keep nonstop, pound the pavement. Don't worry so much. Unfortunately, I'm in an industry that's not funny. So not very many of my content is funny. I'm not a good looking hot chick. So that doesn't work for me. I'm only 5 foot 9 and a little bit of receding hair. So that doesn't work.

I'm not tall, dark, and handsome. But what do I have? I have financial freedom. I have money principles that are going to bring value to your life. So I'm just going to keep going and going and going and one person at time, even if it's just one person at time that saw that video and only got 5,000 views, but I got two or three clients it changed those two or three clients. And then one out of every 50 go extremely viral and I get a ton of people.

But the lives is where I do most my work. If I keep going live every single day, I'm going to get, you know, 50 to 100 people who reach out to me from my text 3050-0-0, things like that. And of those 50 to 100 people, a certain amount of them are going to really embrace what I say. And I'm going to change their lives, one person at time. I love it, love it. So I love the message. It's, you know what, your job is to just keep showing up. Keep showing up.

Keep providing value. Keep being consistent. Keep being yourself. And keep changing people's lives. So I love that motto. Curtis, you are definitely a true trailblazer, my friend. And whether that was, you know, being an athlete in multiple sports, you know, wrestling it with some of the top guys that have ever wrestled at Arizona State and probably

even in the state of Arizona. And then starting a business, inventing something and creating an amazing. business and learning the valuable lesson of making sure contracts are dialed in. And, you know, it's always funny. We always learn, I think, the biggest lessons from failure, right, is from actually having to go through something and saying, man, I don't want that feeling ever to come over me again. So I've loved learning about your story and journey. Is there anything that you want to share with the audience that might add additional

value to them other than what we've talked about today? Absolutely. I have a bestselling book called Everyone Ends Up Poor. And it is one of the most simple books you'll ever read. It's only 100 pages long. And it talks about winning the game of money that you need singles and doubles, not home runs and strikeouts. The finer tune you can make the singles and doubles and avoid the fantasy, the infatuation of hitting these gargantuan home runs that's going to make you a billion dollars tomorrow. It's going to lead you to poor most likely.

And so this book's called Everyone Ends Up Poor explains the simplicity of money, the simplicity of compound. interest, how premium finance inside a compound interest can accelerate your wealth by up to 200% financial freedom, the difference between net worth and financial freedom, all those things. And I give away the free PDF to every single person who wants it. I want you to take the time. It's three hour read, four hour read. It will be the absolute most life-changing book you'll ever read in your whole life because it is the first book ever written that breaks down the difference between net worth and

financial freedom because those two things are not synonymous. So if you'd like a free copy right here, everyone ends up poor. text me right now the word book, B-O-O-K, to the number 305-00. I will send you the PDF, read it, ask any questions you want. All our services are 100% free of charge. Our books, our webinars, are one-on-ones, asking us any question you want. We never charge you in for anything. This is for you to get on the path of financial freedom.

And if you're ready right now to actually look at how to build a great retirement plan, how to get outside of the idea of net worth but actual financial freedom, Next me the word freedom to the number 3050. We're going to line you up with an MPI certified advisor. We're going to build your MPI premium finance package. We're going to do a side-by-side comparison. And if you feel it brings you value, we're not going to push it on you, but the moment you feel it brings you value, move forward with it all in.

Become obsessed with financial freedom and you will find yourself on that path. I love it. I love it. And we're going to link everything down in the show notes. Curtis, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to share your trailblazing story, my friend, keep on blazing your own trail and we'll talk to you soon. Awesome, man. I love it.

And let's do this again.